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During his eight years as President, Ronald Reagan watched 374 movies, an average of nearly one a week. On Saturday, June 4, 1983, he watched WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenager who unwittingly hacks into the main computer at NORAD, the North American....
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![During his eight years as President, Ronald Reagan watched 374 movies, an average of nearly one a week. On Saturday, June 4, 1983, he watched WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenager who unwittingly hacks into the main computer at NORAD, the North American....[1]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcTyyKoX0AESsi6.jpg "During his eight years as President, Ronald Reagan watched 374 movies, an average of nearly one a week. On Saturday, June 4, 1983, he watched WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenager who unwittingly hacks into the main computer at NORAD, the North American....[1]")
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...Defense Command, and, thinking that he’s playing a new computer game, nearly triggers World War III.
The following Wednesday morning, back in the White House, Reagan met with the secretaries of state, defense, and treasury, his national security staff, the chairman of...
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The following Wednesday morning, back in the White House, Reagan met with the secretaries of state, defense, and treasury, his national security staff, the chairman of...
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...the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 16 prominent members of Congress, to discuss a new type of nuclear missile. But Reagan couldn’t get that movie out of his mind. So he asked if anyone else had seen it. Nobody had so he launched into a detailed summary of its plot.
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Reagan turned to General John Vessey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the U.S. military’s top officer, and asked, “Could something like this really happen?” Could someone break into our most sensitive computers?
Vessey, said he would look into it.
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Vessey, said he would look into it.
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One week later, the general came back to the White House with his answer. WarGames, it turned out, wasn’t at all far-fetched. “Mr. President,” he said, “the problem is much worse than you think.”
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Reagan’s question set off a string of studies which culminated, fifteen months later, in a confidential national security decision directive, NSDD-145, signed September 17, 1984, titled “National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security.”
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This sequence of events— Reagan’s oddball question to General Vessey, followed by a pathbreaking policy document— marked the first time that an American president, or a White House directive, discussed what would come to be called “cyber warfare.”
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